Foreign Born
Person to Person - Secretly Canadian
FILTER Grade: 78%

It always seemed odd that Foreign Born was a Los Angeles shoegaze act. Some of its finest moments (a 2005 EP, In the Remote Woods, and the best songs of 2007’s On the Wing Now) breathed deep the rarified air and breathy mesh of Brit forefathers such as Lush and Echo & The Bunnymen. So for this year’s Foreign model, singer Matt Popieluch and guitarist Lewis Pesacov have got a lot of Brit-inspired soaring parts down cold, such as the emotive voices and mountainous guitars of “Blood Oranges.” But there’s a new tautness to be found in the sound that finds the band focusing its gaze from shoegazing’s blur. The rhythms come in fluttery clusters (“That Old Sun”), equally inspired by New Orleans and New Guinea. There’s greater complexity in melody and energy (“Winter Games”) that lends them a Walkmen-like (albeit somewhat sunnier) quality. And the overall process of production and clarity found throughout Popieluch’s rants through the anthemic likes of “See Us Home” give Person to Person a frenetic hue that its Brit predecessors rarely held too dear. This isn’t a necessarily better brand of Foreign Born shoegaze, but it is far shinier and more decidedly American made.